A film about the life of Charles Darwin, which will open the Toronto Film
Festival tomorrow, has sparked fresh debate on the theory of evolution.

Creation, directed by Jon Amiel, focuses on Darwin’s private life as he struggles to accept his daughter’s death and is torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own “growing belief in a world where God has no place,” according to the film’s synopsis.

On online film forums and Christian newspapers, comments about the film have evolved into debates about Darwin's theories. Creation is "virtually certain to provoke massive controversy when it is released," reads one comment on Creation's IMDB page. Last week Christian charity Damaris opened a service to provide “official resources” for churches and community groups who are using the film for educational purposes.

The charity’s website offers advice and opinion on the film:

“Darwin's enormous passion for science is evident, and he is driven to discover truth. How sad, then, that he finally rejects the most important truth of all because no one helps him to see that God understands our pain, having suffered to reconcile us to himself. “

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"This intimate look at Darwin puts a human face on a man whose theory remains controversial to this day.

"The tension between faith and reason is prominent in contemporary culture, and this intimate look at Darwin puts a human face on a man whose theory remains controversial to this day".

Here are the top five arguments, on either side of this monumental disagreement. As Richard Dawkins put it: "One side or the other has got to be wrong, and not just slightly wrong but catastrophically, ignominiously, disastrously wrong."

Arguments to support evolution

Answers

Evolution is the only solution to a problem that no other theory can explain. Among other things, it explains how and why plants and animals exist, where all life comes from and what happens to us when we die.

Tangibility

The theories of evolution are based on explanations of a scientific and material - as opposed to abstract - nature.

Support

The evidence in support of evolution is vast, supported by tens of thousands of laboratory studies.The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory – as do more than half of the world’s religious bodies.

Space

Objects in space, which are more than 8,000 light years away, can be seen from earth. If God created the earth and the universe together at the same time, about 6000 years ago, why can we see universes so far away? The time it would take the light of that universe to reach us would be a lot longer than 6000 years.

No imagination-stretchers

Show me Noah’s boat.

Arguments to support Creation

No evidence for evolution

There is no evidence that evolution has occurred because no transitional forms exist in fossils i.e. scientists cannot prove with fossils that fish evolved into amphibians or that amphibians evolved into reptiles, or that reptiles evolved into birds and mammals. Perhaps becuase of this a surprising number of contemporary scientists support the Creation theory.

History is too short

Creationists argue that if the world is as old as evolution claims it is there would be

-billions more stone age skeletons than have been found

-many more historical records like cave paintings than have been found

-a lot more sodium chloride in the sea

-a lot more sea-floor sediment

Compound Eye

The eye that enables some organisms to see in the dark is so complex that no proven theories for its evolutionary development have yet been put forth. As the CreationWiki puts it, the Compound Eye “has all of the hallmarks of intelligent design and defies attempts to explain it through natural mechanisms”.

Allegory

The Bible uses allegory to explain the creation of the earth. It is a story, so employs figures of speech and other literary devices to tell the story of how God created man e.g. Genesis “days” could also be read as “ages”.

Why?

For what purpose is all of this? Evolutionists have never offered a satisfactory explanation.